Two Camels

John Frederick Lewis

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lewis sketched these camels draped in colorful, decorative trappings during a visit to the Sinai. The evocative study typifies the artist’s carefully detailed work in Egypt between 1841 and 1851, years during which he produced hundreds of drawings. Once back in England, Lewis used the studies to develop evocations of life in Egypt, Syria and Turkey in watercolor and oil, works that profoundly influenced British conceptions of that region. At least two later desert subjects rely on the present sheet.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art